Takeover Tuesday: Julie Morgenstern

Okay, so if clutter is a problem for you, and hello, that is a big problem for a lot of moms. You're going to want to listen really closely to this episode because it's a life changer. Here's the big question. How are these average everyday moms getting radical results in their lives? How are they able to transform their health, money, families, homes, and have fun doing it?

The trick?

We're not average. I'm Hannah Keeley and I'm going to spill our secrets and answer your questions right now in that mom show. So I've got Julie Morgenstern with me today. Julie, how you doing?

I'm doing great. How are you? Hannah?

I'm so good and I owe a lot of that to you.

Oh, tell me more.

I will tell you more. Okay, so this is what you don't know. This is how I found out about you. And it had to have been, oh, my goodness, like probably almost seven, eight years ago.

Okay, really?

And I remember I was sitting with my brother and I was telling him all of my complaints about how disorganized my home was and my papers and my files probably about a decade ago. And he so casually said, well, Hannah, you just need to organize from the inside out. And I'm like, okay, hold up. Like, what are you talking about? And then he shared with me all about Julie Morgenstern and her innovative way to organize. I bought your book and I devoured that like my kids devour pizza when I get it delivered and changed the way I did organizing. So I'm so grateful you're here today. That amazing wisdom to moms. Because I think the way we try to do things and correct me if I'm wrong, is very counterintuitive to the way our mind works. So share with me about that, how you got started with this and how. How you're so brilliant.

Oh, well. So, gosh, there's so many ways that I can dive in. And I really appreciate your story and it's very touching to me to hear it and to meet you and to thank your brother for his recommendation and knowing about the work. So I think that's a sort of. We can go in a lot of directions here. But I think that the, when you. You kind of hit the nail on the head, like when we are very overwhelmed and we want to get organized, we very often approach it in a counter productive way and the impulse is to get organized, but we end up, like, making a worse mess than when we started or putting in an enormous amount of effort and Then it all falls apart within three days. And it can be. So it is like what I call yo yo organizing. Like yo yo dieting. Right? Remember that phrase, yo yo dieting. So I think what happens. There are a couple of things that we have to remember to sort of change the mindset. Number one, first of all, you should never organize on impulse. Don't wait until you cannot take it anymore. And then in some burst of, ugh, I can't take this. I'm going to now, right now, get organized. You need to sort of think and analyze and strategize and plan what you're going to do before you do it. And I teach in organizing from the inside out. It doesn't take long. It takes about an hour to do the analyze and strategize. And it's a very simple set of questions you ask. But if you don't do that, you just sort of attack first, ask questions later. You're going to not design your system in a way that's sustainable. You're not even designing the approach to the project in a way where you can come to a good conclusion if you run out of time. And you know, like when you start an organizing project but you don't finish it because life gets in the way, or you're a mom and like, oh my God, I worked from midnight till three and then I had to go to sleep.

Yeah, yeah, last night. I'm sorry, Julie. That's like an invasion of privacy. That's creepy.

So you really want to analyze and strategize before you attack. You have to ask some questions. And you know, listeners can think about this. Anything that you solve now, whatever your field is, if you're a nurse before you tackle a patient, you analyze and strategize before you figure out what you're gonna do. Right. If you're an engineer, if you're a driver, you're going from here to there. You don't just get in a car without a roadmap. Like, you're like, oh, I'm going here. And maybe you use Google Maps now, but still they give.

I'm thinking about all the women, and I just say women. Cause that's who I work with who get overwhelmed with something. So they run to target and buy totes and. And organizers or files. And they're like, okay, this time I'm going to get organized. So that is absolutely the wrong way of doing it.

Totally. That's another attack. First ask question, say, let me go get a bunch of bins. And that's Going to organize me. Bins are never going to organize you. You have to organize you. And you don't go shopping until the end because you don't know how many containers, where are you going to put them? What are you putting in them? Are they going to fit on the shelves? How many times have you bought containers? And, like, only two and a half containers fit across the shelf. You're like, now there's ways to.

Enough with that camera. I literally did that exact thing. I like, did the whole inside out and I pulled everything out and I measured it all, but I didn't measure the tops of the boxes.

And literally, Julie, the rim, the edge at the top that the lid sits on must be measured or you kills you, kills you. That's all right. These are all normal, normal mistakes, you know, and you learn. So, yeah, you don't go shopping for containers. You don't start throwing things out and then organize what's left. That's not going to organize you. That's just decluttering. Decluttering is not organizing. It's very. Decluttering is not the same as organizing. I'm going to say it again, and everybody's probably like, wait, what?

Yeah, go. Go into that. I want to. I want you to explain that. That's good.

All right. So decluttering is not about designing systems. Decluttering is about identifying what is obsolete and getting rid of it. I think you do that only as a catalyst for change when you're ready to move forward. It's an act during transition in your life. If you're a new mom and you had a baby and you still have all your old clothes for the last five years, you have not gotten back in. It was your dating clothes, it was your party mom clothes. Like, that's maybe obsolete if you haven't worn them in five years kind of thing. So decluttering is just to get rid of what is no longer relevant. But that's not about designing a system. Organizing is about designing a system that allows you to achieve your goals at this moment in your life. It gives you access to the things that you use and love. It makes you more efficient in every task you're trying to do, from getting out the door in the morning to getting meals on the table at dinner time, to looking good when you get dressed in the morning. And actually everything matches and is clean and it wasn't on the floor all wrinkled. And so organizing is about designing a system that makes you more efficient exactly where you are. Decluttering is about releasing the obsolete to make space, to move forward in your life, Good functions. It's very hard to do them both at the same time. Even if you need both, don't do them both at the same time. And I always say, start with organizing, never start with decluttering.

Really? I don't think you would be the opposite.

Exactly. Nope, don't. Why? Because so many reasons why. When you're disorganized, it's very hard to declutter because you have similar objects that are scattered in many different places. So when you come across a pair of platform shoes, you don't know, is this the only pair I have or do I have six other pairs? You can't make good decluttering decisions unless you do it by category and everything's in one place. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean by that? How do you know? You've got to group things before you can decide which is the best of these. They're all scattered. You can't do it. Secondly, decluttering is much harder to do than organizing much because it's about letting go. And we, when we are holding on to stuff, it's not junk. I never think of clutter as junk. I think everybody should take that idea out of your head. That is not junk. Clutter represents an attachment to something we are struggling to release.

Oh, wait, you got to say that one more time because that is so power packed.

Clutter represents an attachment to something we are struggling to release. Wow.

So much there.

So much there.

I'm thinking decluttering our calendars, decluttering our clothes, decluttering our belongings from a different time when we're not ready to move on to a new chapter of our life. So much is right there. And I feel like when people are just, they think, well, I'm just unorganized or I'm just cluttered. What we're doing is we're trying to relegate our own struggles to another time so we don't have to deal with it yet. Yeah.

It'S like something that you have, you're struggling to release. And now on the other hand, if you see it as that, and you look at clutter not as junk, but as what I would call a point of entry. You look at that clutter and you say, what does this represent? To me, it's a point of entry into something unconscious that you are struggling to release.

You're like, oh, it's that.

And once you make it visible to yourself what it represents, then you're in a position to move forward. Or keep it, because now you know why. And now you're not going to call it junk, but you're going to put it on a shelf and put a big ribbon around it. Or you're like, oh, that's not actually giving me the thing that I am seeking. So let me let go of that and find one thing that really gives me what I'm looking for. Do you think the reason that people.

Hold on do you think the reason people hold on to a clutter is because they don't want to face certain issues? Like they don't want to do the deep work that's required.

I think they don't know, okay, there's deep work involved and they like going in. Everybody's like, get rid of your junk, right? That you tell yourself that, come on, this is just junk. I should just get rid of it. And then you can't. And you can't because you don't really realize and you're not honoring it from a nurturing place. It's a punitive place. I'll give you a really great personal mom example.

Okay?

Personal. So when my daughter graduated high school and she moved out, I decided after a long decision making process to move from the apartment I raised her in to an apartment in Manhattan. New life, be more social, open up the dating channels a little bit more. Because I was a single mom. Yeah. And I was packing up and I had done a pretty good job of picking which furniture do I want to bring and which books do I want to bring and which, you know, like, I was pretty good with that. And we were packing and my. I had my own team helping me pack up my apartment to move into the city. And I got to. And I was in a kitchen with one of my own organizers and I picked which dishes and which pots and pans. And then Ron Young, my guy, opened up this cabinet that had all my cookbooks in it. And he was like, which one of these do you want? I was like, I froze. And I was like, I don't know. And he said, well. And it's just like the whole thing slowed down. And I was like, God, I don't really know which ones to take. And I just could not make any decisions. And he finally said, knowing me and knowing the process, he said, julie, what do those cookbooks represent to you? Because the interesting thing was I had never cooked. I never cooked. So I had a cabinet full of cookbooks and I raised my daughter on takeout. I cooked for her once a year on her birthday. Chocolate chip, whole wheat, Pancakes in the shape of her initials. Because I was a single mom, and I just could not. I'm living in New York City. I'm running a business, and I could not ever have time to plan and cook and clean up. And I showed. Right. So I was like, why am I struggling? He said, what do they represent? And I stopped and I asked myself that question, and I was like, they represent the kind of mom I had wanted to be. And I. When I was raised, I. I packed my own lunches. I often cooked for the family. My mom was not that kind of food. Nurture y person. And when I was becoming a mom, I was gonna be the kind of mom that my daughter was gonna come home with her friends after school to a house that smelled like homemade mussels and garlic. And I just had fantasies of doing that, and I never did. Yeah. So I'm like, if I let go of these cookbooks, I'm accepting and let that I did not become that mom. And as long as I had them, I still could. Like, yeah, right.

It's like, the opportunity is still there if you pack it up. That was lost.

Exactly.

Access to that.

That's right. So I. So it was powerful. And I was like, so. But then I said, okay. They. That's. And I was sad about that. But then I said, well, what kind of good mom was I.

Yes, that's there. That's it, man. That's it. So.

And I was like, I was the kind of good mom that when my daughter came home and in the evenings, I was not in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, but I was sitting next to her while she was doing her homework. And I read to her every night. And I was not. I was present in the evenings because I wasn't doing that. And so I was like, oh, so I was still a good. I was a different kind of good mom than the one I envisioned, but I was satisfied with that. And that's. And then I was able to just pick the cookbooks that would be good for dinner parties and date.

Right. I mean, the power that comes out of doing the work and not just saying, ah, but this is over and this is lost, but taking that same pain and using it as, like, what you said, a point of entry, turning it into something positive. How can I reframe this? Where is the positive of this? Yeah, you did that so beautifully.

So I think all clutter is like that. If you have piles of so many moms, so many, you know, people, they have piles of unread material or unread magazines and it's like. Or, you know, the thank you notes that never got written from the baby shower six years ago. And like, they're still sitting there on the, you know, dining room table waiting.

Because if I pack it up and I'm gonna say, I failed at that.

Exactly. But then you say it. So what is it? It's because I want to show my pre. What does it symbolize? Like. Yeah, I want to be like, show my appreciation to my friends and family. Okay, you didn't do it that way. What's another way you can do it? Have. Have a dinner part. Have it. Have a Sunday brunch once, you know, three times a year that you invite all those people you love and show them not with a thank you note, but with your presence. So you just take from it when you ask with kindness, what does this clutter represent? It gives you the information that you can then do something with it. As long as you think it's junk, you're gonna keep it stuck.

Yeah.

Very powerful. It's very powerful.

Yeah. And it doesn't matter what other people's opinion is. It's how you mentally process it and what it means to you. Because all of the clutter that we can't part with is all due to a story that we created about that clutter. So if we can work with the story, then we can get rid of the thing that, you know, represents.

Yep. Yeah. I just met with. Last week, I was having dinner with somebody who I work with. Not an organizer, but. And her parents had died, and she's a little bit. Been in battle with her husband because all their stuff she has had in their garage for the last few years and has been slowly trying to find homes for everything. Furniture and books and all this stuff. And they've. He wants his garage back. And he's like, this is taking you forever. And she's felt bad about that. And I. But she was like, every time she described, I found a home for these books, and I found a home for these clothes, and I found a home for this. And she went from like, I don't know, she said something like 250 boxes, she's down to like a dozen. So she's done a lot of work. Yeah, yeah. But she was feeling so bad about it, and I was like, you know what? That. Why not just send it all to the goodwill or why not send it all to the dump? Right? Because what that was for her, it was her way of scattering her parents ashes. It was stuff going out into the world. To continue. It was just boom. And once I was like, you're not, you're not wasting time. You're scattering their ashes. This is like she just was like, oh my God. Exactly what I'm doing.

It turned it from this heavy burden to all of a sudden a sacred experience.

Yeah.

That is so insightful of you to be able to see that. And all of a sudden when we have clarity, it's not hard to declutter. No, it really is. It's not hard to do it if you have this. If you can see the story, get the clarity, get the direction, like, oh, it makes sense and it's nurturing and.

It'S, it's a self nurturing process rather than a self critical process. You can't declutter when it's self critical. You just can't. Like, oh my God, I should be able to do this. You just freeze. So anyway, it's very powerful.

Can we make any change out of a negative space? We can't really make any positive change out of negativity. We can't.

No, I don't think we can. We resist.

Not a positive. We can change out of negativity, but it can always. It'll be burdensome and we'll typically go back to the story we had before. But if we can frame it up in a positive way and get that positive energy so we're not criticizing ourselves like we're failure because we have clutter. But all of a sudden we can get that. We can have it become, like you said, an experience. It becomes self nurturing, it becomes learning and growing. All of a sudden it's so much easier.

Yeah, so much easier. Got to do it with love. And you really do like self love. And it's just, you have to believe that there is a positive reason behind everything that you're doing. Always there's a positive reason for it. Find that out and then do some good with that knowledge. It's much easier to understand that.

Julie. I felt like we started talking about clutter and now we're basically like preaching a message of freedom here because. Because.